Stages of Gentrification and the Temporal and Spatial Relationship with Crime

• In Event: Communities and Place: Housing and Neighborhood Crime

Abstract

Gentrification is typically considered a neighborhood transitioning from impoverished and disordered into a thriving middle-to-upper class community. Some scholars suggest that gentrification reduces crime, others argue it increases crime, and a few scholars indicate it does both. But gentrification is a nebulous concept, and the disparate findings may be tied to how gentrification is operationalized. Further, previous research often does not examine the process of gentrification over time, simply indicating whether the neighborhood has been gentrified or not. However, a neighborhood may be at varying stages of the process, which may be differentially related to crime. The current study turns to urban studies literature and the Urban Displacement Project to utilize a more comprehensive measure of gentrification that incorporates neighborhood demographic variables (e.g., percent of college-educated adults, percent non-Hispanic white, median household income), housing costs, and access to transportation. This unique measure of gentrification also identifies neighborhood typologies of gentrification to indicate where on the spectrum of the gentrification process neighborhoods fall. We use this more thorough definition of gentrification and the corresponding typologies of gentrification over time to examine temporal and spatial changes in crime relative to the stage of the gentrification process in Los Angeles, CA.

Authors

• Lexi Madison Gill, University of South Florida

• Lyndsay N. Boggess, University of South Florida